~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gogol

adapted by Jason Craig and Sean Owens
SF Examiner review June 19, 2001 (Joe Mader)

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Good-time 'Gogol'

The Exit Theatre celebrates the opening of its new venue, the Exit on Taylor (around the
corner from the original), with "Gogol," a clown adaptation of three short stories by Nikolai
Gogol.

This fourth performance space (the original facility is on Eddy Street) has three stages,
including the recently renovated cafÈ space which hosts informal readings, experimental
small productions and other events) will be especially welcome once Il Teatro 450, a small
Union Square stage, goes into uncertain hiatus in the fall. (The building will be earthquake
retrofitted.)

On paper, "Gogol" seems the perfect vehicle to initiate the Exit on Taylor. Written by two
extraordinary talents -- one local, Sean Owens, and one from New York, Jason Craig --
both of whom have had extraordinary success at the Exit's annual San Francisco Fringe
Festival, "Gogol" uses mime and clown techniques -- theater arts not usually found in
mainstream theater but staples of the Fringe -- and employs a talented cast. The show
attempts to update and illuminate three pieces by one of the fathers of the modern short
story.

Reading the 1842 masterpiece "The Overcoat," in fact, you can't help but think of Charlie
Chaplin's tramp in this tale of the ambitionless clerk Akaky Akievich, whose soul is
awakened when he scrimps and saves to acquire a brand new overcoat. But its theft soon
after purchase destroys him.

"The Nose," from 1836, is an absurdist fantasy wherein a titular councillor wakes up one
day without a nose, but regains it a few weeks later. And the 1835 "Diary of a Madman" is
an altered-consciousness first-person narrative of a man so frustrated by the desire to arise
out of his too-lowly status as another titular councillor he becomes mad -- hearing talking
dogs, reading their letters (yes, the dogs'), and then imagining he's the King of Spain.

It's both funny and harrowing.

Owens and Craig interweave the three stories, with one actor dedicated to the main role in
each story, while a chorus of clowns plays all the minor roles. The authors utilize music
(the wonderful klezmer- and folk-inspired score is by David Malloy, and performed by Malloy
and several of the company members on piano, harmonica, harmonium, accordion and
spoons), songs, absurdist monologues and intentionally bad jokes to tell their stories.

The marvelous Christopher Kuckenbaker is Akaky, the impoverished clerk, and there's
probably no higher compliment than to say he approaches Chaplin in the empathy and
originality he displays here.

With his permanently furrowed brow (the wonderfully expressive clown makeup is by
Michelle Talgarow), his slow, deliberate progressions around the stage, whether leaning
into an icy win or deliberately performing his Sisyphean employment, he's a master of
restraint and craft. He speaks not a word, making only one sound in the entire play.

When he first tries on his new red and gold coat, we see his body and his face become
suffused with an inner joy, and it's magnificent. (He's unfortunately slightly upstaged during
this scene by a large mirror frame.) His employment is a little too abstractly absurd. (In the
book, he was a lowly copyist; here, he labors with a funnel to insert items in a balloon that
he then blows up. It's sent to another department that pops the balloon and sends the item
back to him to begin again.)

But Kuckenbaker's inventiveness when he displays Akaky's rueful economizing with a cup
of tea approaches the tragicomic genius of Chaplin eating his freshly boiled shoe in "The
Gold Rush."

This is Kuckenbaker's final performance as a San Francisco resident -- he's moving to New
York -- and it's a fitting farewell gift, capping off a series of extraordinary performances over
the past few years.

Craig is the "Collegiate Assessor" Kovalev who loses his nose, spots it parading around St.
Petersburg, wearing the uniform of a higher rank than his own, and thankfully regains it
later. Craig wears comically stuffed tights (the stunning costumes, by Cynthia Quiroga,
evoke the Russian circus: starched collars, brightly colored vests, tails coats and trousers
for the men; striped tights and fluffy petticoats for the women), and harrumphs his
nonsense lines with great importance, sputtering obscenities.

Owens has the most difficult part; as the madman Aksenty, he has to externalize an
internal consciousness. Theatergoers unfamiliar with Gogol's story will have no idea why
the object of Aksenty's affection, Sophie (Thessaly Lerner), is manipulating a dog puppet.

Still, Owens sings some wonderful songs in a hammy baritone: "23 Quills," about the
pathetic tasks he performs for Sophie's father so that he can be near her; another directed
at Sophie's dog ("Do you mean to drive me frantic?/ Your doggie diatribe's pedantic"), and a
wonderful comic duet with Lerner.

Lerner is tremendous fun in her many roles. At one point she dons roller skates and moves
gracefully around the expansive stage. Taunting the three hapless protagonists, singing
beautifully and clowning with grace and style, she looks as if there were no where else
she'd rather be. She's natural performer.

Admirable as many things in this show are, there are some sequences of incomprehensible
chaos. As intimated earlier, Owens and Craig rely too much on viewers' prior familiarity with
Gogol's writing and don't pay enough attention to their own storytelling. And some of the
clowning gets to be a little self-indulgent.

Director Meredith Eldridge needs to have provided more clarity to the action, though there is
a remarkable sequence evoking a busy St. Petersburg street where the company perfectly
captures the rapidity and noise of urban life.

But in the finale, where Akaky and Aksenty, two souls who have lost everything, move
towards Kovalev, the buffoon who has regained what was lost, Eldridge doesn't provide the
necessary resonance of malice and sorrow. It seems truncated and unfulfilling.

It's interesting to compare "Gogol" with ACT's import last year of the technically proficient
but soporific "Shockheaded Peter." "Gogol" could use some of that production's slick
perfection while maintaining its own far greater intellectual reach and energy.

Owens and Craig aren't afraid to take chances, and they're clearly gifted, but they've got a
ways to go until their ambitions are fully realized.

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